One Small Step NASA: Triumph and Tragedy

40 years ago,

the world watched breathless

as humanity achieved something incredible.

Houston, Tranquillity Base here, the eagle has landed.

Putting men on the Moon marked a leap in science and technology.

Roger, the clock is operating. They're on their way.

It signalled a new era of exploration...

when pioneers would photograph places few had ever imagined.

Now these explorers relive their incredible stories.

The descent was a very tricky business.

100 feet above the ground we got the call -

60 seconds.

And with newly enhanced footage

they show us vividly

for the first time the spectacular things they saw.

July 1958, America establishes the National Aeronautics

and Space Administration - NASA.

It's a direct reaction to their Cold War enemy,

the Soviet Union,

who, less than a year before, launched the first

man-made satellite, Sputnik, to the shock of the West.

They just simply didn't believe it. They thought of the Soviet Union

as being a country that couldn't build a refrigerator,

let alone a satellite.

NASA's brief is to beat the Russians.

It was the United States

rising to the challenge of the Soviet ambitions

and Soviet progress in space.

The Space Race is on.

When the new space agency, NASA,

announced their intention,

it created a great deal of excitement.

To recruit its first ever astronauts,

NASA draws from the reservoir of the brave -

military test pilots.

Project Mercury is born.

Please, ladies and gentlemen, the nation's Mercury astronauts.

It's objective - to put a man in Earth orbit.

Mercury was the beginning

of everything that we would do thereafter.

Without Mercury there would have been no going to the Moon.

In 1961, Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard is selected

to ride NASA's first manned rocket beyond our atmosphere.

Roger, liftoff and the clock is starting.

It is a great first step, but NASA is still trailing

the Russians who have already put a cosmonaut into orbit.

After a 20 minute flight, Shepard splashes down

as America's first space pioneer.

US president John Kennedy makes an astonishing pledge.

We choose to go to the Moon.

We choose to go to the Moon in this decade

and do the other things

not because they are easy but because they are hard.

Kennedy's announcement electrifies America's young space programme.

We had a total of 20 minutes'

of manned space flight experience, when president Kennedy issues this challenge.

Many of us wondered what the heck he was talking about.

I mean it was, er...a very audacious step forward.

That challenge came three weeks

after Alan Shepard flew. We knew beans about going to the Moon.

We didn't know the mathematics, we didn't have the real time capability

so it wasn't until we were forced to start thinking about it seriously

that we realised a change

in the state of art was going to be required.

NASA addresses the science of space travel

with Mercury's follow-up programme, Gemini.

To prepare for a trip to another heavenly body

astronauts learn to orbit the Earth for as much as two weeks at a time,

dock two orbiting spacecraft and perfect the art of the space walk.

We caught up with the Russians, we had surpassed

the technical skills and capabilities they had. Now it's time

to show the Soviets and the world what we can do as a free nation.

It's time for NASA to set its sights on the Moon.

The new programme is called Apollo.

Apollo 1 will test a new command module in Earth orbit.

First time astronaut Roger Chaffee joins veteran NASA fliers

Ed White - the first American to walk in space -

and Commander Gus Grissom, perhaps the most respected

all-round astronaut in the US space programme.

In January of 1967, their launch is nearing its countdown.

The transition from the Gemini to the Apollo programme

was probably the most difficult period of time

that we had in the entire space programme to date.

Only three years remain to fulfil

Kennedy's pledge to land on the Moon by the end of the decade.

The pressure to deliver is intense.

It just seemed that we were running

faster and faster and faster and weren't catching up -

the programme was accelerating out ahead of us.

Apollo 1 is less than four weeks from liftoff.

Tests now simulate realistic launch conditions.

By that time, the Apollo programme was well underway

and the Apollo 1 crew were going to test

the Command Module, the mother-ship,

the part we would live in going back and forth to the Moon.

This procedure involves pressurizing the closed cockpit

to 16 pounds per square inch of pure oxygen

to simulate spaceflight conditions.

All the individuals had the opportunity to call off

the test. The flight director, launch director,

the crew could have said, "This isn't our day.

"Let's back out and sort these things out," but nobody did that.

KLAXON BLARES

There was a fire down on the pad. And it was obvious

when I arrived, that a very horrific event had occurred.

Apparently there was an electrical short of some kind and bam

everything went

and the three guys lost their lives.

A spark from the capsule's wiring starts a fire,

killing all three astronauts within 30 seconds.

We had no idea

what the effect of high oxygen content environments

would do as far as burning goes.

And, er, we learned the hard way.

The problem is when you pressurize a vehicle like the Apollo spacecraft

to 16 psi oxygen, 100% oxygen, you're living potentially in a firestorm.

NASA has been using pure oxygen in the Command Module to deliver life support in the spacecraft.

It takes a tragedy to illustrate their poor judgment.

Ed White flew with me on Gemini 4

and he was undoubtedly my closest friend

in my whole life. We didn't have to talk to each other, we could tell

what each other was thinking because we spent so much time together.

It was a great tragedy to me personally,

but it was also to the country.

I wasn't sure whether they were burying our friends or the entire Apollo Programme at that time.

I don't think any of us were sure where we were headed.

That fire, their sacrifice, made us stop and think.

We were the ones

that were responsible for the loss of the Apollo 1 crew.

The Apollo team overhauls

the capsule's design including materials,

wiring and a quick-release emergency escape hatch.

You know, it was like the phoenix

rising out of the ashes, we built

a far better, far safer, far more complete spacecraft.

We looked to see what caused the problem,

tried to fix it as best we could,

made major changes.

After five unmanned flights of the improved module, Apollo 7,

with a crew onboard, achieves Apollo 1's mission objective.

But it's 18 months later.

The deadline for the lunar landing is pressing.

Pressure is increased further when word reaches NASA

that the Soviet Union is turning their sights on the Moon

with their latest N1 rocket programme.

The Americans suddenly face a big decision, play it safe

moving in small steps through space and risk falling behind the Soviets,

or take an unplanned leap to the Moon to assure being first.

I thought this was probably the riskiest first step

that we'd ever take in the business of space flight.

News of the decision is brought to Apollo 8 commander

Frank Borman by the flight director.

He said that the Soviets were going to try to put

a manned flight around the Moon before the year end.

So that was our mission, to go the Moon

orbit ten times them come home. That was it.

Borman's Apollo 8 crewmates will include

Bill Anders and Jim Lovell -

Borman's crewmate on the epic Gemini 7 thee years earlier.

I had already spent 400 hours in Earth orbit, and I thought

that going some place else was much needed for me.

Frank Borman is fond of saying

that Apollo 8 was just another battle in the Cold War.

So, as a military guy, I was, er, pleased to take on this extra risk.

Borman and the crew of Apollo 8

are now to embark on the greatest adventure of all space voyages.

It was, to me, the most dangerous mission

that NASA ever undertook.

Er, there's no question in my mind that it was the boldest decision we ever made in the space programme.

To get to the Moon, Apollo 8 will need to travel more than a thousand times further away

than any astronaut ever has and break new speed records.

To leave Earth's orbit,

we have to continue to accelerate from this orbital velocity

of five miles per second up to seven miles per second.

And then we have to set it on a trajectory path

within a range of 50 to 100 miles in front of the Moon,

so they can go into orbit around the Moon.

To transport three men at this velocity will require

the largest rocket in history -

the Saturn 5.

As tall as a 36 storey building, it's been test fired just twice.

But Apollo 8 will be the first time men ride it.

The fact that we want to leave Earth

to travel all the way, 240,000 miles, to the Moon

gave it a considerably higher level of risk to any previous flight.

Well, I actually, er, went out and sat in the parking lot

with some friends of mine the night before the launch.

And we sat on the hood of their car and you could see

the rocket, with the searchlights, over in the distance

and behind it was this very thin sliver of the Moon.

And it was starting to sink in more on me

that this Moon was one heck of a long way off.

This is Apollo Launch Control with two hours 20 minutes and counting.

Countdown still going very satisfactory at this time.

We expect that astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell

and Bill Anders will be coming out in a matter of a few minutes.

We appear to have a beautiful morning here for a flight

to the Moon and we're also synchronizing

the clocks in the spacecraft with the Mission Control Centre in Houston.

The ever present smell of coffee and cigarettes

literally dominates this room.

You could have walked in and picked it up instantly.

Then there's the sound of the room.

There's a hum, a noise level.

Somehow you get to feel the atmosphere just crackling in there.

We felt, OK we're going for it we're going to get it today.

It was very early in the morning.

We were driven down to the Saturn 5.

We took the elevator up.

It had onboard around 5 million pounds of high explosives.

This is Apollo Launch Control. T minus 16 minutes and counting.

Though I didn't share it with Valerie at the time...

I thought our chances were about one in three, of not making it back.

I knew the risks and I had five children

and I simply didn't allow myself to anticipate tragedy.

Everything was secondary other than the mission.

Nothing mattered as much as doing your job.

Susan and the family were in second place.

That's not easy to say but it happens to be true.

I'm not going to sit here and be namby-pamby about it. It was true that I was more interested

in that succeeding than anything else in life, at that point in my life.

I honestly felt that if Apollo 8 was going to be the

the success story that we all wanted it to be,

it was going to be a miracle.

T minus 90 seconds and counting.

The Saturn 5 had had only two test flights before

and the last one had done very, very badly.

50 seconds and counting.

We were killed more times in simulation than you can shake a stick at.

We have power transfer

and we're now on the flight batteries within the launch vehicle. 45 seconds.

I do remember lying there having a very limited view of the sky,

but seeing a seagull circling over our escape tower.

I just wonder whatever happened to that bird?

He must have been the most surprised animal in the world when that thing took off.

The Saturn 5 is the most powerful machine ever made.

At launch, it holds so much explosive power that only

three carefully selected men are allowed within a three mile radius.

And they are sitting inside it.

Anytime you sit on top of a rocket.

You're taking a risk cos there's an awful lot of chemical energy.

I think the Saturn 5 had the same equivalent energy as a small atom bomb.

Multiple high speed cameras

cover the launch for analysis in the event of disaster.

..Ten, nine. We have ignition sequence start.

The engines are on. Four, three,

two, one, zero.

I felt like I was a rat

in the jaws of a big terrier.

The thrashing was violent and you couldn't see the instrument panel.

I was sure we were hitting the launch tower.

Frank Borman told me later that he took his hand off the critical launch abort handle

for fear that, er, he would activate it inadvertently.

He said he would rather die than make a false abort.

No-one was ready for Saturn 5.

We were three miles away. Believe me that's close enough.

You don't want to go any closer because all of a sudden

we get this rattling like an earthquake or something

and it flops your skin on you as it goes up.

Walter Cronkite was next door to us and they hadn't done a very good job in building his studio,

so the roof comes down on top of his head.

I had to grab a microphone

and I had to run outside. Our equipment was falling off of shelves.

The clapping and the thunder of it...

you can't see it on TV -

you have to be there to know what I'm talking about.

The Saturn 5 breaks the sound barrier within a minute,

burning more fuel than any other rocket,

lifting the mass of a sea-going ship.

It burned over 1,000 gallons of fuel a second, lifted 6.8 million pounds -

about the equivalent, as I recall, of a Navy destroyer.

Five engines in the first stage,

blast the Apollo 8 spacecraft to seven times the speed of sound.

Erm, the first stage burned out I think we were doing three or four Gs, suddenly it quit.

S2 has ignited we can confirm.

You go bang, bang.

I felt like I was being hurled through the instrument panel

by one of these big war catapults.

After less than three hours orbiting the Earth,

Apollo 8 is cleared to blast thrusters, throwing them out of orbit towards the distant Moon.

I had lit the third stage to get the velocity which is almost...

24,000 miles per hour.

It reminded me of going into a tunnel. You could actually see

the Earth shrink as we sped on our way away on our way to the Moon.

It was quite an interesting sight.

As Apollo 8 hurtles at 24,000mph to the Moon,

the crew is given the first ever view

of the whole Earth as a globe.

Back on Earth, hundreds of millions of people are peering back towards them in stunned fascination.

-Well, Patrick Moore, what did you think of that?

-Quite incredible,

-probably the greatest technological triumph made by man.

-And nobody would deny

that we will eventually leave the Earth and venture out into the universe.

The next step is necessary.

But while the media gears up

to provide maximum coverage, the press feeding frenzy comes at a cost for some.

The news media came from around the world

and you would look out the window

and it was almost frightening because the cars kept coming,

and they just engulfed the neighbourhood so to speak.

And every time we left the house, of course they were there waiting.

We had no media training -

that was not part of the programme -

and there was not any preparation apart from the fact that we had been military wives.

After three days' journey, Apollo 8 approaches its target.

We're going to target a spacecraft to the Moon where the Moon is moving, the Earth's rotating

and we're going to try and get 50 miles in front of it three days later.

One degree off course could mean flying off into infinity or crashing into the Moon.

Houston, one minute to LOF.

All systems go.

It was a very narrow little slit that this spacecraft had to go through.

As they enter lunar orbit, Apollo 8 will swing behind the Moon

and lose radio contact with the Earth

until they emerge from the other side.

That was one of the key points in the flight plan.

If we lost communications at the moment we were supposed to, we knew we were on course.

Now you're gone. Command, reset the tape recorders forward, low bit rate.

Roger, stay steering, guys.

Thanks a lot, troops.

We'll see you on the other side.

At the instant when we were supposed to loose radio commission, we lost it.

After flying 240,000 miles I think we were off

about a mile-and-a-half when we got to

the place we were suppose to aim on so that's pretty incredible.

And there were just stars everywhere,

and suddenly the stars stopped and there was this big dark hole...

and that was the Moon.

And I must say the hair went up

on the back of my neck when I saw that.

The idea of romance seems to leave you when you're that close.

It was an incredible sight to see for a moment,

very incredible.

Apollo 8 reaches the far side of the Moon,

only 70 miles above its surface,

the first ever sighting by human eyes.

As they scan the lunar surface with their cameras,

the men are unprepared for a bigger surprise up ahead.

When we made the burn, Frank turned the spacecraft

180 degrees and rolled.

Now, for the first time, when the Earth came up ahead of us

that's when we were, er, amazed at this beautiful planet.

The most impressive sight of the whole flight

was seeing the Earth from 240,000 miles -

the only thing in the universe that had any colour. That was the high point of the flight.

I just grabbed the cameras

with the rest of the crew and started shooting.

The result is one of the most famous photographs in history.

It's called Earthrise.

The Earthrise picture tells us more about the Earth

and what it really is and what we have here.

And you can only see it when it's so far away

that your thumb can hide it when you put it up to the window.

Though we had prepared for and trained to go the Moon,

to study the Moon

what we discovered was our own planet Earth.

'For all the people back on Earth the crew of Apollo 8

'has a message that we would like to send to you. In the beginning,

'God created the Heaven and the Earth

'and the Earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.'

When the crew starting reading from the Book of Genesis, this was the magic time for us

because it put this whole context of space and what we were doing,

I think, in a very appropriate fashion.

It turned out to be from our advantage point at least perfect,

because you can see almost what the beginning was and then the...

and of course in the distance was the Earth as it is today.

'And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.'

It happened to be Christmas Eve and it happened to be Genesis

and Genesis was significant.

So it made a huge impact. I mean, we were all sitting there crying.

Oh, it was, it was just, just such a perfect way to end.

'And God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.'

It's time to come home.

To break free of lunar orbit, Apollo 8

will rely on its rocket to fire one last time,

steering them back towards Earth.

Chris Kraft came by the house to see how we were doing

and I said, "Chris, you have got to tell me the truth.

"Please, please tell me what you think the chances are

"that you are going to get them out of lunar orbit."

I think that I told Susan that the chances

of mission success were probably 50-50.

And I said, "You honestly are going to give them a 50-50 chance?"

He said, "Do you buy that one?"

I said, "Yes, I'll buy that," because I wasn't giving them that big a chance.

Susan thought we weren't going to make it. I never had any question that we wouldn't.

37 agonising minutes of radio silence pass

as the spacecraft makes its final trip behind the Moon.

All anyone can do is wait.

Unquestionably the most tense moment was firing the engines behind the Moon on the return to Earth.

Because if you know anything about science and engineering you know it doesn't take

much for the damn thing to go wrong.

Nobody could really know if the million details that had to work

could all come together and make a successful mission.

When you know they're in their last lunar orbit

and they go behind the Moon I was so deep in prayer

that I don't think I even really heard much of what was going on, on that squawk box.

'Apollo 8,

'Houston. Over?

'Apollo 8, Houston. Over?'

'Houston, Apollo 8. Over.'

APPLAUSE

The relief at that moment. I really don't think I could describe...

what I felt.

We were just...ecstatic.

It was just a triumphant moment and even the children seemed to really grasp that part of it.

You can take a deep breath now. The spacecraft's coming back home

and it was a marvellous time.

A major hurdle has been cleared by getting Apollo 8 back out of lunar orbit and headed home.

If the surface propulsion engine had not fired,

we would still be orbiting the Moon 40 years later.

We were very fortunate yes,

but we were damn good, too.

But the real celebrations must wait.

Home is still 240,000 miles away.

Apollo 8 will freefall back to Earth,

reaching a record-breaking re-entry velocity upon arrival.

We came back

and entered the Earth's atmosphere I think at about 25,000 miles an hour.

Pretty soon I think we were sitting in the middle of a blowtorch, and what worried me

is that I would see these chunks flying off.

And I thought, "Oh, my God." I could almost feel the heat through the back.

That was the most dangerous part of the flight.

At about 40,000 feet the drogue chute came out

and then around 12,000 feet the three big chutes came out.

Apollo 8 finally splashes down on target in the dark of night.

The impact was so hard that we flipped over.

And so here we were hanging upside down

and all the trash, that had been in the spacecraft

and collected on the floor during entry, was now raining on our face.

We were floating in the pitch dark and a rough sea.

I got seasick and threw up all over Anders and Lovell.

What a way to end a trip to the Moon.

The huge milestone of Apollo 8 is that humans reached the Moon.

The final task now awaits -

to land on it.

Apollo 9 will bring NASA one step closer to that ultimate goal.

Apollo 9 was the first flight of all the equipment

they were going to take to the Moon where it was all together.

It was also the first flight of the Lunar Module

and it was pretty much an engineering test flight.

We want to develop the techniques we'll use around the Moon

and take the first shot at them around the Earth.

To land on the Moon, NASA needs a super-lightweight

Lunar Module that can detach from the main spacecraft in orbit.

Whenever I saw a model of the Lunar Module it had these rigid sides and really looked strong.

Turns out the exterior is made of cellophane and put together

with Scotch tape and staples. It's Mylar and it's a very dangerous vehicle.

This thing is really a piece of junk.

We're gonna fly this flimsy thing?!

Training pilots to fly this strange craft

involves an even weirder contraption.

The Lunar Landing Training Vehicle.

It truly did give you as close to the lunar dynamic environment as you

could possibly get

in the real world on Earth.

They were so sensitive that we had ejection seats in them

and Neil Armstrong was one of the guys who ejected before his flight.

Lift-off. We have lift-off at 11am Eastern Standard Time.

McDivitt commands Apollo 9.

Its mission - test fly the Lunar Module, the LEM, in Earth orbit.

Apollo 9, you are go all the way. Everything looks good.

It's the final piece in the puzzle required for a lunar landing.

After months of simulators and rehearsal,

it's now time to check that the LEM can really fly in space.

It was a difficult vehicle to fly but you had to learn

how to do that because that's the way you landed on the Moon.

3, 2, 1. Lift-off.

In Earth orbit, McDivitt leaves the command module to detach and fly the Lunar Module solo.

It's the first time a human flies a spacecraft not capable of bringing him back to Earth.

The Lunar Module didn't have a heat shield on it, and so it would have burned up on the way in,

so our only way home to Earth was to get back to the Command Module and that's known as a motivator.

So we were motivated to get back to the Command Module.

-How does that sports car handle, Jim?

-Pretty nice.

Apollo 9 showed that that the engineering aspects of the vehicles

together in the Lunar Module were fine.

Hey, Dave. We're at 29 miles and we can still see you.

It all went together in an unbelievably good way.

Now you're coming in.

So we had a good idea how all this stuff worked.

That's good looking.

There you go.

I think you got a handle on it now.

Good show, Spider.

OK, Houston, we're locked up.

Apollo 9 successfully demonstrates that the Lunar Lander can fly and rendezvous in space.

One final journey must be taken before

any attempt to land on the Moon.

Apollo 10 was the first time a Lunar Module went to the Moon.

We flew the exact same profile on Apollo 10 as they were going to fly on Apollo 11.

Apollo 10, you can tell the world that we have arrived.

Apollo 10 - Gene Cernan, John Young, and commander Tom Stafford

rehearse a lunar landing right up to 10 miles from the Moon's surface.

We detached in the Lunar Module

went down to 10 miles,

we'd radar map, we'd photo map, we picked out the landing site.

It was great. We'd practised so much in the simulator

we knew we could do it,

Pitch over and look out the window and know where you're gonna land, it was pretty straightforward.

Charlie Brown, Houston, over.

Roger, read you loud and clear. Snoopy looks good for DOI.

Sounds great, we copy.

It's impressive to go that fast that close. 47,000 is pretty close

after you've gone a quarter of a million miles.

You look down and your amazed at the giant craters and particularly

the boulders they're as big as a 40 or 50 storey building or bigger.

Oh, Houston, Houston, this is Snoopy.

-Rog, Snoop. Go ahead.

-We is going. We is down among 'em, Charlie.

Roger, I hear you are weaving your way up the freeway. Can you give me a post-burn report over?

Hey, Joe, we're about ready to dock.

Roger that.

The mission was to paint that white line in the sky so Neil wouldn't get lost.

Apollo 10 is a success.

The next mission is cleared to attempt a landing on the Moon.

Apollo 11's commander is to be Neil Armstrong.

Apollos 7, 8, 9 and 10 had all done a great job.

Each flight achieved all its objectives,

giving Apollo 11 all the information that was needed

to try a descent to the lunar surface.

Michael Collins, Command Module Pilot, and Buzz Aldrin, Lunar Module Pilot.

They're training for the mission that will make some of the biggest news in history.

Neil Armstrong was the consummate professional, the ice man, he was the kind of guy

that would always remain an American hero.

Buzz Aldrin we had worked with on Gemini.

He was the guy that was working by checklist, he had an intuitive feel

for this thing called orbital mechanics and descent trajectories

and abort trajectories.

Mike Collins.

Almost the astute professor.

The kinda guy that you wanted to have in your hip pocket if things got tight.

Neil Armstrong recognised the intensity of the training,

the intensity of the preparation for the first landing.

I worked with Neil and Buzz and Mike Collins

probably starting about three months out.

As launch date nears, the media spotlight swings toward NASA

and the team that is preparing for a mission many believe is not possible.

The interest is worldwide.

The Module together with its power unit and main engine which sits

underneath it down there, is generally referred to as the Mother Spacecraft.

For the BBC, James Burke makes numerous special reports leading up to the launch.

Inside, it's even more cramped than it looks from outside for three men

all of whom are about 5ft 11 each.

The Lunar Module pilot, Buzz Aldrin, lies in that couch there.

In the centre couch, which has been taken out to let us get in, Michael Collins, the Command Module pilot.

And Neil Armstrong, the man who will be the first to set foot on the Moon,

the commander, flies in the left hand couch here.

You had the feeling that this team was in Superbowl form.

They were capable of accomplishing anything that would come their way.

Less than six months before President Kennedy's famous deadline,

the Moon explorers are ready to launch.

The astronauts then sat down to breakfast.

They had a menu of filet mignon, scrambled eggs, toast, coffee and tea.

This is Apollo Launch Control. We're still aiming toward our planned lift-off

at the start of the lunar window, 9.32am Eastern Daylight.

You did all the worrying before the flight,

and you did all the training and the testing before the flight.

And I think once you climb on board, you're ready to go.

So it was just an adventure, that's why we all volunteered.

This is Apollo Launch Control. T minus 3 hours, 4 minutes, 32 seconds and counting.

Right on time as far as the astronaut countdown is concerned.

The flying crew now departing from their crew quarters here at the Kennedy Space Centre.

The transfer van now departing on the start of its 8 mile trip to launch pad A here at complex 39.

Right now, our count at 3 hours, 3 minutes, and counting.

As the Apollo 11 crew approach their ride to the Moon,

nearly a million people have gathered at the Cape to witness and take part in history.

Everybody was coming to the Cape.

All the RVs, you couldn't get a hotel room

anywhere near, I mean, they were sold out up to 100 miles away.

It's just unbelievable that the people who came and tried to get on the Cape.

It was really something.

I could watch the sunrise and the waves coming in and the evidence of the crowds

and I felt a calmness, with this giant rocket,

was something that I wanted to remember

as the sun was rising on a very eventful day.

Once Armstrong and Collins are aboard then Aldrin will be called

and he will take the middle seat in the spacecraft.

This is Apollo Launch Control.

We've passed the 6 minute mark in our countdown for Apollo 11,

the flight to land the first men on the Moon.

The swing arm now coming back, as our countdown continues.

Filing command coming in now. We're on an automatic sequence

as the master computer supervises hundreds of events

occurring over these last few minutes.

T minus 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.

12, 11, 10, 9,

Ignition sequence starts. 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

-ENGINES ROAR

-Lift-off! We have lift-off!

Once the spacecraft rockets out of Earth orbit,

the astronauts settle in for a three day ride to the Moon.

Back at Houston, a much larger team is hard at work

to keep the mission on course.

To me, the, the crew was the sort of the tip of the iceberg.

There were 400,000 people underneath them in various roles that supported the flight.

And you might have thought you were invincible, but you weren't going to

make it to the Moon without everybody doing their job.

One of the things I have always been compelled to do is

very emotionally, talk to my people about what we were about to do.

On the 5th day after launch, Apollo 11 faces its mission objective.

I start off, to a great extent, laying out what we intend to do.

I say from the day we were born, we were meant to be in this room

Whatever we will do in this room today, I will stand behind every decision you will make.

We came into this room as a team and we will leave this room as a team.

Because from this moment forward,

we are going to lock those Control Room doors.

No controller will enter this room or leave this room,

until we have either landed on the Moon,

we have crashed into the Moon,

or we have aborted the landing.

And only one of those things is good, the other two are bad.

Aldrin and Armstrong have moved into the Lunar Module.

We separate the Command Module from the Lunar Module.

Roger, how does it look?

We did that so our orbit remained the same

and Mike moved away from us briefly.

I'd say everything is going just swimmingly. Beautiful.

After the separation manoeuvre, when we came back again on the back side of the Moon,

while we made a manoeuvre to a lower orbit.

Houston, Eagle. How do you read?

Eagle, standing by for your burn report, over.

Roger, the burn was on time.

Tempo in the room picks up right as we acquire spacecraft telemetry and we immediately got problems.

X and Z notes.

RADIO STATIC

We got communications problems you cannot believe.

Columbia Houston, we've lost all data with Eagle.

Please have engine reapply on the high gain, over.

Houston loses direct communication with the Lander.

Columbia Houston, we've lost them, over.

Kranz improvises.

Charlie Duke is my principal communicator, voicing instructions up to Mike Collins

who is passing the instructions on to Neil and Buzz in the Lunar Module.

Eagle, Houston. We recommend you go 10 right.

It will help us on the high gain signal strength, over.

Yeah, you should have me now, Houston.

Eagle, we got you now. It's looking good, over.

But we finally keep it all together and at descent minus five minutes

I give the go for a powered descent.

You are go to continue powered descent, continue powered descent.

Eagle, we got you now...

This will mark Apollo 11's greatest and unique challenge.

Landing an experimental vehicle on unknown ground.

As a seasoned test pilot commander, Armstrong has been training for this moment all his career.

You should be with me now, Houston.

The descent was very tricky business.

The challenge was to try to land at a relatively specific landing site

that had no runway, no control tower, no radar and no navigation aids.

Our plan was to start at a specific point

in lunar orbit at about 50,000 feet altitude and something over

3,000 miles per hour to use one continuous rocket burn

to decelerate to a hover in the landing area.

Eagle, Houston. Everything's looking good here, over.

-OK, all flight controllers, going to go for landing. Retro.

-Go.

-Fido?

-Go.

-Control?

-Go!

-Telcom?

-Go.

-Jimsay?

-Go.

-Ekon?

-Go.

-Surgeon?

-Go.

-Captain, go, we're go for landing.

-You're go for landing, over.

-ALARM BUZZES

-Program alarm.

The computer said this is not normal.

It's a 12-02.

So it turned on 12-02 alarm.

Of course, we didn't really understand or remember exactly what that was.

We were having these computer problems, data drop out and all of those things.

So all of that builds tension and anxiety into the whole process.

Give us a reading on the 12-02 program alarm.

The computer in Apollo would rank the jobs that it had to do within this cycle.

If it didn't get through all of the tasks that was on the list it said computer overload.

With information technology in its infancy,

the Apollo computer struggles to multi-task.

Mission control had encountered this only once before.

We had seen these on our final day in training.

We had rehearsed them with the back up crew on the spacecraft.

So of course the guidance guy knew what they were.

And so Steve Bales gave a go on those alarms.

Roger, we're going that alarm.

My focus, at that point was the fuel, but all the other had just built up

this tremendous tension in Mission Control,

you could feel like you could just cut it with a knife, and it was dead silence.

2,000 feet. 2,000 feet. 47 degrees. Roger.

Above the Moon,

Armstrong and Aldrin disregard 12-02 and continue their descent.

Eagle looking great, you're go.

But overload is not the only problem coming from the Apollo computer.

Altitude 1600.

So we get down and then we start seeing this funny trajectory, at least I did.

400 feet down. 3½. 47 forwards.

Well, at about 400 feet, if I remember correctly,

Neil levelled off and was flying horizontally.

1½ down.

Our computer was steering us toward football stadium-size craters,

surrounded by steep slopes and covered with large boulders.

Armstrong is going to have to take over and manually land this thing.

Better than the simulator.

That takes fuel to slow down and level off, then to land.

Improvising, Armstrong will now have to find a landing site

with his naked eye.

We only have enough fuel for two minutes at a hover throttle setting

and we then get very quiet in the room and the only, call-outs that

are being given from then on, are seconds of fuel remaining.

Lunar Module test flights on Apollo 9 and 10

gave us a reasonable confidence level in the engine thrust and fuel consumption.

We hoped to reach the landing area with about a minute and a half of fuel remaining.

100 feet. 3½ down. 9 forward.

At about 100 feet above the ground, we got the call of 60 seconds.

-Simple call, Eagle, 60 seconds.

-60 seconds.

And at that point the low level quantity light came on.

And of course the tension is mounting rapidly in Mission Control.

I could look out the window calling out the altitude rate and velocity, to Neil.

40 feet down, 2½...

I don't think anything prepared us for the intensity of the work

we would see. Because there were battles.

Four forward, drifting to the right a little.

Now they had 30 seconds to go...

30 seconds.

We used most of our remaining fuel finding a relatively level and smooth landing spot.

Faint shadow. Picking up some dust.

I called out "Faint shadow, picking up some dust" cos the descent engine was beginning to cloud.

In the final stages of the landing, everybody was watching their systems.

Contact light? OK, engines stop, ACA out of descent

Control, both engines over-ride...

Our eyes met each other and I remember just patting him on the shoulder.

Inside the Eagle, we shook hands.

Maybe we did both, I'm not sure.

4-13 is in.

We copy you down, Eagle.

Houston...Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.

Roger, Tranquility. We copy you on the ground.

You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue.

We're breathing again. Thanks a lot.

That day, with this team, we just landed on the Moon.

Houston, this is Neil, radio check.

Neil, this is Houston, loud and clear.

The time has come to take the first walk on the Moon.

-Breaker, breaker. 5 square.

-Roger.

Break, break. Buzz, this is Houston.

Radio check and to verify TV circuit breaker in.

Our shift was over, so I went home and...

we watched it on the TV at home.

Duke joins a record breaking audience as people the world over

tune in to see and hear for themselves an event many had thought impossible.

Just the whole world stopped,

it was just wonderful.

In Britain it's 4am as the world's eyes watch a live broadcast

from the Lunar Lander's cameras.

And there, the Lunar Module on the surface of the Moon.

At Mission Control, the new Capsule Communicator is astronaut Bruce McCandless.

OK, Neil, we can see you coming down the ladder now.

I just couldn't bring myself to believe that there were people that I knew, friends of mine,

on the Moon at that point, it didn't look any different

than it had before

and it was just a surreal feeling.

OK, Neil, we can see you coming down the ladder now.

Very, very fine grain as you get close to it.

It's almost like a powder.

Stepping off the LEM now.

It's one small step for man...

..one giant leap for mankind.

It was very difficult to try to capture the events that describe the feeling

that the entire world has at this instant,

as we are witness to history, that we've had the opportunity

to look over the shoulders of the explorers at these

very momentous events as they are occurring.

Thank God we were here at this time,

in this place and could observe it.

There was a great feeling of elation accomplishing the goal that

hundreds of thousands of people had been working on for a decade.

OK, the contingency sampler is down...

The first thing that do when you get down on the surface

is pick up some of the lunar soil, put it in a little bag put it in your suit pocket

so that if everything deteriorates from that point on at least we have some lunar soil.

-I'll try to get a rock in here.

-That looks beautiful, Neil.

It has a stark beauty all its own.

It's like much of the high desert of the United States.

It's different but it's very pretty out here.

OK, you ready for me to come out?

All set.

15 minutes behind his commander, Buzz Aldrin is ready to join

Armstrong on the surface of the Moon.

You've got three more steps and then a long one.

Those who haven't read the plaque, we'll read the plaque.

It's on the front landing gear of this LEM...

We went around to take the cover off of the plaque

and to read it back to Earth and that's when it was Neil's task to read this.

"Here, men from the Planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon.

"July, 1969 AD.

"We came in peace for all mankind."

Those phrases I think summarise the major symbolism of the entire Apollo missions.

We came in peace for all mankind.

Columbia, this is Houston, reading you loud and clear, over.

60 miles above them, Michael Collins orbits the Moon alone in the Command Module.

Reading you loud and clear. How's it going?

Roger, the EVA is progressing beautifully.

I believe they're setting up the flag now.

Great.

I guess you're about the only person around that doesn't have TV coverage of the scene.

That's all right, I don't mind a bit.

-Tell me if you got a picture, Houston.

-Oh, we got a beautiful picture, Neil.

You didn't want a flag just lifeless, hanging...

OK, I'm gonna move it.

..so you have to have a rod that goes along the top of the flag and it has to snap into position.

-Pull that in...

-OK.

Got the flag up now. The Stars and Stripes are on the Moon.

-The Stars and Stripes are on the Moon.

-Beautiful, just beautiful.

When explorers come to a new location they take the flag of their country,

so the decision was made that it was going to be an American flag

-Beautiful, beautiful.

-Ain't that something?

Magnificent sight out here.

Magnificent desolation.

Neil and Buzz, the President of the United States

is in his office now and would like to say a few words to you, over.

That would be an honour.

We didn't rehearse the phone call from the White House at all,

matter of fact the whole idea of communication with the White House was kind of a surprise.

All right. Go ahead, Mr President. This is Houston out.

Hello, Neil and Buzz. I'm talking to you by telephone

from the Oval Room at the White House

and this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made.

I just can't tell you how proud we all are of you what you...

For every American, this has to be the proudest day of our lives...

I talked to President Nixon and I only got to do this,

in the first place you don't have anything to do with this,

it was a Kennedy-Johnson deal.

In the second place you're going to be taking up too much air time,

I said you're better off just being very low key about it.

And he said I agree and he did.

And thank you very much and I look forward, all of us look forward

to seeing you on the Hornet on Thursday.

Armstrong and Aldrin spend just over two hours exploring the surface of the Moon.

When the space walk was successfully completed, they were back inside there was a very definite feeling

of relief and of pride that we were right where we needed to be.

And we were on our way.

9, 8, 7, 6,

5, first stage, arm entrance, 3.

Apollo 11 was the culmination in my view of the Apollo programme.

Humans travelled to another planet and eventually landed on it

and explored it. And that was their legacy.

The world would join in celebration of this great human achievement

as the crew of Apollo 11 toured their own planet

to collective awe everywhere.

We were looking at all this cheering and certainly

there was a sense that the world was thinking that yeah, WE did it.

It was a magnificent testimony to the evolution of humankind.

The Space Race is over but the story of the human race in space is only just beginning.

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